Thursday, September 18, 2008

Here is a startling statistic: according to Green Progress, more than 8 billion to 10 billion plastic and wire hangers are sold each year, with only 15% ever recycled. That’s enough clothes hangers to fill up FOUR Empire State Buildings from basement to observation deck.

Clothes hangers are difficult to recycle. The plastic ones are made of several types of plastic, so it’s difficult for recycling centers to sort them properly. Recycling centers often ban metal clothes hangers because they turn into a tangled mess.

There are, however, a couple options for disposing hangers responsibly, such as dropping them off at your local Salvation Army or other resale store; or giving them to your nearby dry cleaners.

So my Thrifty Green Thursday tip of the week is to think twice before you throw your extra clothes hangers in the trash. Click here for more tips.

5 comments:

You always have good ideas for recycling strange items! Here in Portland, we could recycle wire hangers with our curbside recycling. I like the idea of passing them on to a thrift store instead. It's great to reuse! If you want to get crafty, you could use wire hangers to make wreaths this Christmas. I did that one year and now I have no wire hangers. We never dry clean anything, so we're not in danger of getting any more.

Who knew there were so many wire hangers in the world? My goodness! Thanks so much for clueing us into a simple way to recycle a household item. (That seems to be your specialty! :) Thanks for joining us for Thrifty Green Thursday!